He might be a serial sleazeball but I saw Harvey hailed like a rock star

Léa Seydoux, Angelina Jolie, Cara Delevingne, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd… just a few of the names on the roll-call of high-profile women standing up to condemn serial sleazeball and alleged rapist Harvey Weinstein.

He abused women, he abused the system. But, by virtue of his success, wealth and influence, the system shielded him – just as his potential victims lionised him.

Many years ago, I was at the famous Vanity

Fair party, where winners and wannabes rub shoulders with Hollywood royalty.

I arrived early. Box office bankers came and went, barely meriting a second glance from the see-andbe-seen crowd of names and nearly-names.

Then, suddenly, it was as if a sinkhole had appeared, sucking every woman into the centre of the room. Harvey was in the house.

And this overweight fiftysomething was mobbed like a rock star. Harvey was where it was at. Harvey made things happen.

He was the proverbial allpowerful big swinger who could make careers with a single phone call, and break them after a single refusal.

There have already been sly murmurs that these women were somehow complicit. They were not – they were frightened. Bullying them for speaking the truth is to add insult to injury.